Topic- Liberalism and Gender

Liberalism and Gender

Liberalism
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the
governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views
depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally
support free markets, free trade, limited government, individual rights
(including civil rights and human rights), capitalism, democracy, secularism,
racial equality, internationalism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and
freedom of religion & gender equality.

Gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating
between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these
characteristics may include biological sex, sex-based social structures (i.e.,
gender roles), or gender identity. Most cultures use a gender binary, having
two genders (boys/men and girls/women);[4] those who exist outside these
groups fall under the umbrella term non-binary or genderqueer. Some
societies have specific genders besides "man" and "woman", such as the
hijras of South Asia; these are often referred to as third genders.
Liberalism is no friend of gender equality

Historically, liberal thought was not aligned with female emancipation or gender
equality. The idea that women were inferior to men and needed to be kept in a
state of dependency was not a betrayal of liberalism – instead, it was at the heart of
liberal thinking.

The issue of gender freedom is one that is often raised when favourably
contrasting liberal western societies with other (in particular today, Muslim) parts of
the world.  The idea of freedom is fundamental to liberalism’s claims to legitimacy
and ideological hegemony. Female emancipation is seen as a great triumph of
liberal thought and action – women in western liberal democracies are
enfranchised, and are seen to have formal equality under the law in the areas of
employment, pay and in control over their bodies.
Gender Equality in Modern Liberalism

Women’s emancipation is seen as central to an understanding of modernity, it is

seen as a marker of a progressive society, and as such contributes to liberalism’s
sense of pre-eminence. However, there are considerable problems with this
picture. At the turn of this century, liberal regimes opportunistically laid claim to the
idea of female emancipation in order to justify illegal war in Iraq and the invasion of
Afghanistan

Overcoming the exclusion of women from the liberal sphere of political equality,
like the end of slavery in the US, was the outcome not of liberal reform but of
violent upheavals. The realisation of women’s political rights was the consequence
of struggle which had the violence of the First World War behind it and the
revolutionary upheavals of the early twentieth century.
Gender Equality and Rights of Vote

 When the vote was obtained, the struggle for equal rights would be won.

In the cases of class and race, complete gender equality and emancipation have
not yet been fully achieved in the liberal west (over a century and half after the
bourgeois revolutions that swept away the old order and brought in modern liberal
democracies). Full voting rights have not produced female emancipation. Liberal
thinking, in equating political freedom with economic or social freedom, disavows
the inequality and unfreedom that arises from a lack of social justice. Indeed, the
liberal wing of the feminist movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth century,
by adhering to the liberal tenets on the separation of political rights and economic
rights, and focusing almost exclusively on the franchise, not only made an appalling
historic compromise in supporting the First World War with the promise of the vote,
but also wrongly believed that when the vote was obtained, the struggle for equal
rights would be won.
 Conclusion

Liberalism’s promise of freedom and equality was never intended for the majority,
but for the propertied elite, and the advances made by women, workers, and the
anti-racist movement have been under sustained attack from our liberal rulers
almost from the moment they were won.